- As fires intensify in the western U.S., utility companies are on the front lines to protect power lines, and AI is a big part of the process.
- The U.S. has roughly 5.5 million
miles of power lines on more than a quarter billion poles surrounded by
even more trees, and keeping a human eye on all of it is impossible.
- Companies such as Pano AI,
Satelytics and California-based AiDash are tapping high tech to lower
risk.
As
fires intensify in the western U.S., utility companies are on the front lines,
working to protect the power lines that serve millions of customers. As the
frequency of fires and severe storms increases, so does the amount of
technology that utility companies use to keep things running.
The U.S. has roughly 5.5 million miles of power lines on more than
a quarter billion poles surrounded by even more trees, and keeping a human eye
on all of it is impossible.
That’s why artificial intelligence is taking the lead.
Enter new software companies such as Pano AI, Satelytics and
California-based AiDash, which are tapping high tech to lower risk.
“Using satellites, we can monitor each and every tree, each and
every pole, as frequently as we want, identify the challenges and fix them
before they cause an accident,” Abhishek Singh, CEO and co-founder of AiDash,
told CNBC.
Utility companies are often required by local governments to scan
100% of their lines and address any issues before fire season.
“This entire exercise of maintaining trees along power lines is a
$10 billion annual spend in the U.S. alone,” Singh added. “With the labor cost
increasing, and shortage of labor, it is becoming increasingly difficult to
identify the problems without technology.”
AiDash uses its tech to not only identify current issues, but also
potential future ones, integrating weather data with detailed vegetation data
to gauge risk levels throughout the fire season and address them. The company
does the same for extreme wind and precipitation events.
National Grid, which services customers in much of the northeast,
is both a client of and investor in AiDash through its venture capital arm,
National Grid Partners.
“The most important thing for us is the grid reliability,” Andre Turenne,
vice president of investments at National Grid Partners, told CNBC, adding that
the company has seen a 30% reduction in outages and a 55% reduction in the
duration of outages since using AiDash.
“Their differentiator was they built an end-to-end platform, a
workflow platform designed for utility engineers to actually deploy and do
predictive analytics, deploy the crews on the ground and generally provide a
platform for our engineers to use end-to-end,” said Turenne.
In addition to National Grid Partners, AiDash is backed by Duke
Energy, Edison International, Shell Ventures, Lightrock and SE Ventures.
Its total venture capital funding so far is $91.5 million.
As part of the green transition, and as more industries make the
switch to all-electric power, grid capacity and reliability will become even
more vital. Over the next five years, National Grid said it plans to spend $75
billion in its jurisdictions in the U.K., as well as in New York and Massachusetts,
to upgrade for both.
